Over the past years, we’ve seen headline after headline announcing major layoffs at some of the world’s biggest companies. AI is often mentioned as one of the reasons – but reality is more nuanced.
AI is certainly changing the way businesses operate, but many workforce reductions have also been driven by cost-cutting, restructuring, and shifting business priorities (where AI is more of an accelerator or an excuse).
While companies have reduced hiring in areas such as:
They’re simultaneously investing heavily in entirely new roles, including:
It’s now common to see a company announce layoffs while advertising hundreds, or even thousands of new positions requiring AI skills.
An interesting trend that is beginning to emerge is being referred to as the “AI Boomerang”: companies rehiring people for roles they previously believed AI could replace, only now those employees are expected to work with AI rather than instead of it.
Many organisations initially believed AI could automate entire roles are finding themselves re-hiring for the same positions.
That’s because they’ve discovered that AI often handles around 60–80% of a workflow extremely well, but still struggles with the remaining work requiring human judgement, business context, creativity, or customer interaction. Developers are being re-hired to assure a level of confidence in the technical products.
New US Indeed Hiring Data:
Recent hiring trends point in the same direction:
✅ Software development job postings have rebounded by nearly 15% since the launch of Claude Code, even while overall job postings declined by 7%.
✅ 37% of the growth in software job postings came from positions explicitly requiring AI skills.
✅ Companies making the largest investments in AI increased entry-level hiring by 12% during the two years following adoption.
AI isn’t simply replacing workers. It’s changing what employers are looking for.
The good news is that these skills can be learned.
Whether you’re a developer, product manager, data professional, marketer, founder, or simply looking to future-proof your career, learning how to build with AI has quickly become one of the most valuable career investments you can make.
At Le Wagon, we’ve designed practical, hands-on AI courses that help professionals build real AI applications, automate workflows, and understand the tools companies are hiring for today, not just the technology they’re talking about.
The AI job market isn’t disappearing. It’s evolving. The question is: Will your skills evolve with it?
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